Sanky Blog

By Harry Lynch & Paul Habig

Are you worried about Wall Street’s woes? Fretting about your donors’ plunging portfolios? Wondering if your foundation funders can still make good on their pledges?

If you’re trying to figure out what sure-fire steps you can take to bolster your fundraising efforts in the coming weeks and months, have you considered … well … search engine optimization?

As one strategy for these times, it’s not nearly as off the wall as it sounds. Through all of the economic turbulence of the recent months, giving via the Internet has continued to be one of the brightest spots in fundraising and shows few signs of being affected by the crisis. But no matter how wonderful your website is (or you think it is), your best donors and potential donors can’t give to you online unless they find your website in the first place.

Search engines are the second biggest source of website traffic, second only to email (see the July 21 AFP eWire story on email appeals).

Search engine optimization (SEO) should be a key tool in your fundraising arsenal.

By now, most of us know the basics of SEO: Submitting our websites to major search engines, placing text on our homepages that’s rich with descriptive keywords and ensuring our website contains quality content that is frequently refreshed.

But the methodology used by Google and Yahoo is a constantly changing—a peculiar science with a fair bit of art thrown in. Keeping up with the latest trends in SEO can be difficult—and falling into traps and making common errors is hard to avoid. A few tips for these challenging times:

Site Architecture and Design. Technical minutia may put many fundraisers to sleep, but it is hugely significant when it comes to ensuring that your site is search-engine friendly. Utilizing up-to-date methods of coding and structuring your site is absolutely essential when it comes to SEO. If your website was designed more than three or four years back, chances are the technical structure is limiting how well the search engine “spiders” can find and read the information on your site.

Title Tags. Each web page on your site has a title tag, which is located in the “metadata” field. Adding strategic and relevant keywords or key phrases in this field is likely to gain you significant improvements in your search engine rankings. The text within the title tag is what appears in a search engine result.

Keyword Frequency. This is a fairly easy SEO technique. First, you need to decide what keyword or phrase is going to be optimized for a webpage (one or two per page). Second, make sure there is repetition of that keyword or phrase throughout that webpage. Last, add the same keyword or phrase in your website headings (text that is often larger and bolded, known to website designers as the <h17> tag). This will make a huge difference with SEO.

Friendly URLs. In the age of content management systems, pay attention not only to the SEO opportunities your system may provide, but to also some the roadblocks. For example, many content management systems (the program that allows you to build your website) generate URL web addresses that are comprised of numbers and lack a descriptive word or two that will make this key online component SEO-friendly.

Links. Have you considered methodically approaching websites that have related topics or content and asking them to provide a link to your own? What about submitting articles or press releases? These are all good ways to establish your site as an “authority” on issues, and this low-tech approach is highly effective but often overlooked. Incoming links from legitimate and apposite websites not only generate traffic, but tend to dramatically improve your rankings in Google and Yahoo.

Flash animations. Your beautiful animations may dazzle your boss and board members, but search engine spiders generally index only text that is in a particular computer code called HTML. The very elements causing those oohs and ahhs may also be limiting your traffic by making it difficult for crawlers to read your site. Consider imbedding flash “movies” into your HTML codes rather than designing your entire site in Flash.

Of course, it takes time for search engine rankings to improve. The steps above won’t provide you with instant gratification. But as you watch your website traffic gradually and steadily increase and your donations climb, the efforts will be well worth it—especially in these troubling times.

SankyDirect and SankyNet are proud to be working with Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) to help raise the crucial funds they need for their vital work.

VNSNY offers compassionate care to thousands of grateful patients in New York. With over 9,860 highly skilled care providers, VNSNY is the largest not-for-profit home health care agency in the nation. VNSNY caregivers travel throughout New York City, Nassau and Westchester Counties, working with an average of 30,000 patients each day. Their work includes long-term care services for the elderly, hospice care for those at the end of life, and home health care services tailored for patients in the Hispanic, Asian, or Russian communities.

SankyDirect will be developing a robust direct mail program for VNSNY. Giving active donors the opportunity to specify for which of VNSNY’s programs they would like their funds donated, this extensive direct mail campaign promises to be a rewarding challenge for SankyDirect.

SankyNet will be launching an exciting new online marketing and fundraising program that will greatly enhance the client’s ability to communicate with current donors, potential donors, and other friends of VNSNY. This program marks VNSNY’s first foray into using the internet for online donations. SankyNet is very enthusiastic to have the opportunity to develop this strategic tool that will help VNSNY continue to help thousands of grateful New Yorkers.

With integrated services that range from cultivating relationships through direct mail to an aggressive new marketing strategy, SankyNet and SankyDirect will work together to help VNSNY meet their marketing potential. We look forward to the unique opportunities these exciting projects will present!

We invite you to learn more about this vital organization.

Gilda’s Club is named for comedian Gilda Radner, and was founded by Joanna Bull (along with Gene Wilder and Joel Siegel), who worked as a cancer psychotherapist during Ms. Radner’s illness. Gilda’s Club works to create welcoming communities of free support for everyone living with cancer - men, women, teens and children - along with their families and friends. Gilda’s Club believes that providing an emotional and social support community is an essential complement to medical treatment for people living with cancer.

SankyNet understands the importance of the work Gilda’s Club is doing for those learning to live with cancer. We look forward to working with Gilda’s Club during the coming months to redesign their website and expand their vital online resources. Thousands of people living with cancer have found Gilda’s Club to be a sanctuary during a very scary time. SankyNet is excited to find ways to craft their website to feel as warm and welcoming as Gilda’s Club itself.

Please take a moment to learn more about Gilda’s Club of New York.

This year’s competition for the 2008 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence was especially fierce – which is why we are so honored to announce that our 2007 Holiday campaign for Covenant House took first place for e-philanthropy!

Gold Award judges complimented us by saying that with compelling copy, heartfelt stories and a positive message rounding out the ask, our Covenant House campaign “really covered all the bases.”

Tim O’Leary, vice president of McPherson Associates, said, “this is how you run an integrated, online campaign. The creative was eye-catching and clean, [and] crisp images draw the recipient further into the body of the e-mails.”

At SankyNet we have enjoyed our relationship with Covenant House for over four years. We are honored and excited to share this wonderful award with them!

When Greenwich House approached SankyNet with the opportunity to redesign their website, we were thrilled at the creative potential this project held.

For more than a century, Greenwich House has brought people together to overcome big-city isolation and the problems that go with it, making them feel at home in their communities. Operating 17 different social, medical, mental-health, educational and cultural programs, Greenwich House serves the needs of more than 9,000 New Yorkers annually.

In their original site, each of Greenwich House’s diverse programs stood alone with their own independent looks and feels. SankyNet recommended a dramatic site re-design to bring each Greenwich House program together under one cohesive design, allowing each program to remain distinct while still connecting to the overall theme. Now the children’s education program and the senior services program each reflect their own personalities while still fitting within the Greenwich House theme. The arts program and the health/social services program feel separate, yet still connected to the Greenwich House site.

After SankyNet’s redesign, the Greenwich House site looks great and is much more user-friendly!

Greenwich House was so pleased with our site redesign and branding work that they signed on with SankyNet for an ongoing marketing and communications plan. We are excited to continue this partnership with Greenwich House and look forward to working with them well into the future!

Please take a moment to look at their new website.

On Saturday September 13, after crossing Cuba and raging through the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Ike made landfall at Galveston, Texas. Both people and their pets were in dire need of assistance after this devastating storm. By Monday afternoon, SankyNet had quickly created and distributed an emergency e-appeal to help PetSmart Charities to raise the funds they would need to respond to this crisis. And respond they did.

PetSmart Charities® deployed its Emergency Relief Waggin’® to assist groups managing vital rescue operations on the front lines… providing 16 tons of emergency animal-care and volunteer supplies valued at $50,000. Supplies include pet food, crates, beds, bowls, litter and litter pans, and other necessary animal-care items, as well as a generator, fans, tents, a battery charger, lights and other supplies to assist the volunteers on site who are caring for displaced companion animals.

SankyNet is proud to have helped PetSmart Charities in their heroic effort. If you would like to learn more about our fundraising efforts for PetSmart Charities, please click here.

By Harry Lynch
Published on AFP site on July 21st, 2008

It’s been a while since a nonprofit executive asked me that question, but it still makes me smile. And groan a little too.

The myths and confusion engulfing email only seem to proliferate with each passing year. So here we are in 2008. A cool $10 billion or so is now being raised annually online. But what is the truth about email?

Is it the best way to reach a mass audience of potential online donors? Or is the highly publicized plunge in open rates just the latest sign of overuse and dwindling effectiveness? Are social networking and other new tools overtaking it as the top online fundraising medium? Or is email really the best way to engage donors – especially the younger ones – yearned for by so many nonprofit executives?

The bottom line is that email has emerged as a mature, predictable, and cost-effective fundraising medium – raising exponentially more money online (with far fewer resources) than social networking, search engine marketing, or any other vehicle than the all-important website itself.

But even in 2008, confusion about the medium and best practices still reign – and limit the success of far too many non-profits. So what are some of the most common myths? How can they be countered?

Myth #1: Declining open rates are a sign of “email fatigue.”

The truth is that “open-rates” just aren’t that meaningful anymore. Most recipient email programs now employ “image blockers” that skew open rates and give false negative readings. And aggregate statistics often cited in surveys are skewed because so many nonprofits now “append” email addresses from their land lists – and these are opened at lower rates, dramatically suppressing the overall average.

Emailers who segment their lists and tracks results according to donors, prospects, and append groups not only find that donor and prospect open rates are holding up, but they can better tailor their strategies and messages to improve overall results.

Myth #2: You can never send too much email.

With email just so darn cheap, the tendency for many nonprofits is just to blast away. What’s the harm, after all? The “harm” is that the recipient audiences will start to tune out your messages; click-through rates will fall rapidly, and opt-outs surge.

Online fundraisers can excel by taking the time to craft a thoughtful email segmentation plan and schedule. Friends who sign up to be “online advocates” might not mind getting one or two or even three “action alert” emails every week. But donors who ask for a monthly enewsletter will be turned off if their inbox starts to get cluttered with e-missives every other day. One final word: Opt-outs are easy – just the click of a button – and forever! It’s not like having your direct mail solicitation thrown away … so you can send another one the next month. When it comes to email, an opt-out is forever – there are no second chances!

Myth #3: Ask and ye shall receive.

The golden rule for offline fundraising is terribly tarnished advice when it comes to email. Online donors and prospects want information and a relationship before they’re even asked for money – let alone would consider giving. If you ask too soon, or too often, your list will stop opening your emails – or opt-out altogether.

Some marketing experts recommend a firm 80/20 rule – four informational emails for every one that is “ask” focused. While some experts suggest that a simple link to your donation page in non-fundraising e-newsletters and alerts doesn’t have any negative impact , others recommend avoiding any hint of fundraising until the email cycle reaches an appropriate point for the ask. Everyone agrees: asking for money too soon and/or too often on the Internet has serious, immediate, and irreversible consequences.

Myth #4: There’s no such thing as email acquisition.

True … but false too. Unlike traditional direct mail, where thousands of lists are available for rental at any given moment, few legitimate email lists available for rental seem to hold much promise for fundraising … and the ones we’ve tested yield negligible results.

That said, email acquisition is a vital – but too often overlooked – part of any online program. It involves a very distinct two-step process that first includes building your organization’s own email prospect list. Assuming you can offer a compelling e-newsletter, action alert, or other valuable information, you can methodically use your website … append technology … and even search engine marketing to promote email opt-ins – and then very carefully cultivate these new friends to give.

Myth #5: Timing is everything.

Many fundraisers now know that the obsession with precisely timing the day and even hour to send email solicitations is a bit overdone. The “best” moment to send an email tends to be a moving target depending on a whole host of factors and variables.

Rather than obsess about the advantages of, say, Tuesday morning vs. Thursday afternoon email deliveries, online marketers can more productively expend energy ensuring they are ready to leverage the tremendous opportunities that emerge because of the speed and precision of the medium. We all know that email offers one of the most effective ways to capture donations after a natural disaster or media event – but this is only possible when the systems and people are in place who can respond when there is such an opportunity. And many charities are learning that email is a way to get a “year end giving reminder” into the hands of your donors on, say, exactly the morning of December 30.

Myth #6: Email is the best way to reach a young audience.

These days you’re more likely to reach grandma than grandson via email. Study after study confirms that email is increasingly a medium of choice for people over 50 … and even over 65!

If you’re looking to motivate and tap the enthusiasm of our youngest citizens – say those under 25 – a text message or MySpace page will likely serve you better. If you’re looking for a donation from the audience with most of the money and inclination to give, traditional direct mail and email – if not a complicated combination of the two – are the way to go.

Reports of the death of email, as a useful fundraising tool, have been greatly exaggerated. But the sooner we recognize that email is truly a unique medium with its own set of rules and best practices, the sooner we can all put its power to better use – and raise more money for the causes we cherish.

NonProfitMarketingGuide.com, a marketing resource for nonprofit professionals, recently published an excellent article detailing ways for nonprofit organizations to make their websites more user-friendly. They report that many nonprofits make the mistake of organizing their sites so that they read like old-fashioned brochures, never drawing people into their mission.

But the article cites Citymeals-on-Wheels as an exception to the rule. It explains that the Citymeals website, which was design by SankyNet, is expertly organized to meet the needs of the people who are coming to the site.

Citmeals-on-Wheels “has three tabs right across the top: Get Meals, Volunteer and Support Us. That about sums it up, doesn’t it? The left side menu includes additional information, but those three tabs right at the top stand out and show me that they know exactly why people are coming to their website.”

SankyNet listened to the needs of our client and we are proud to have produced a website worthy of such praise. We invite you to read the entire article to learn how to “Make Your Website About Visitors, Not About You”.

By Paul Habig

MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn… Should these sites be a part of nonprofits’ online fundraising strategies? How do nonprofits raise funds from social networks? Are they really raising money?

The Washington Post recently published an article about the total funds raised from Facebook’s Cause application, which allows Facebook users to fundraise for their favorite charity with the support of other users and friends.

Nearly 20,000 nonprofit organizations collectively raised a whopping $2.5 million in the application’s first year. Breaking this down, this averages $128.50 per organization. Don’t get me wrong, this is an exciting moment in online fundraising, but these numbers require us to put the medium in perspective.

So, should nonprofits be investing time, energy, and resources into social networks?

Yes… but as part of a long-term online strategic plan, not as a short-term online fundraising plan. Why? Social networks have become the latest communication medium for the next generation of future donors, a generation that generally doesn’t respond to direct mail and uses email less and less.

Why reach out to these constituents now? We know this demographic are many years away from entering the ideal age for online donors. Nonprofits, such as Amnesty International, canvassed college campuses in the 60s and 70s, creating their present-day donor base. Similarly, nonprofits with a large presence on social networks will be in an ideal position to mobilize a future generation.

The pillar of online fundraising is built on the foundation of long-term cultivation and stewardship.

In conclusion, demographics for social network sites are changing everyday as more people, young and old, flock to these sites. Fundraisers need to be utilizing the social networks as part of their online communications strategy. Additionally, campaigns need to be integrated with all mediums–including direct mail, email, websites, and social networks.

Each June, DMFA Members show off their best direct mail and email fundraising efforts at the Package of the Year contest. This year, SankyNet submitted a donor cultivation e-newsletter rather than a traditional e-appeal to help demonstrate the effectiveness of “information-based” fundraising communications. The move paid off — we were awarded Runner-Up in the email category!

Our submission was an issue of the Covenant House Beacon, a monthly online newsletter designed and written by SankyNet to optimize giving with multiple fundraising emphases. Each story helps build awareness of Covenant House’s vital programs while gradually, yet methodically, building to an “ask” that links directly to the online donation form.

The issue submitted for the DMFA Package of the Year was part of a multi-faceted Matching Gift Campaign and “dropped” on the very last day that donors could take advantage of the match. By combining compelling stories about homeless kids with a reminder about the well-publicized campaign, Covenant House achieved a remarkable spike in online donations.

View the full screenshot of Covenant House Beacon.

Covenant House is the largest privately-funded agency in the Americas providing shelter and other services to homeless, runaway and throwaway youth. SankyNet is proud of our long and successful partnership with this truly amazing organization.